My partner and I at the time, sat in coffee shops for 6 months working our butts off on our marketing, but not making a penny. On one particular day, she looked at me and said she needed to start looking for a job. I looked back at her and said, “I know this is going to work. I know… like I KNOW know. I know we are going to make it and it’s going to change our lives. We can’t give up”.

Hey there, thanks for checking out my recommendations, tips and tools, and of course tuning into my podcast, Women Rocking Real Estate.

I’m really glad you’re here.

Today we’re going to be talking about the 3 things you need to succeed in real estate.

Now, this is going to seem overly simplified when I tell you what they are, but that is on purpose, because the simpler it is, the easier it is to remember and to help keep you on track.

To succeed in real estate, you need to have the right mindset, you need to take the right approach and you need to do the right things. Pretty simple right?

But first, before I get right into that I want to share a little story for you about my own start in Real Estate…

I got my Real Estate license in October 2008 – does anyone remember that time?

The exact week that I went to pick up my license, was the EXACT same week that the world economy imploded and the Real Estate market subsequently crashed.

My timing could not have been worse.

I had invested my entire life savings into launching my new real estate business and there was absolutely nothing going on, it was crickets. My partner and I at the time, sat in coffee shops for 6 months working our butts off on our marketing, but not making a penny. On one particular day, she looked at me and said she needed to start looking for a job. I looked back at her and said, “I know this is going to work. I know… like I KNOW know. I know we are going to make it and it’s going to change our lives. We can’t give up”.

That was the mindset I had. Failure was NOT an option and I don’t say that as a cliche. It literally wasn’t an option.

So since absolutely nothing was going on in my real estate business, I decided to take a week’s vacation down south….well y’all know where this is going…

Sure enough, as soon as my trip was booked, a friend of the family called me to say he wanted me to list his house.

Hallelujah!

And it wasn’t just any house, it was one of the nicest most sought-after homes in the neighbourhood. I was ecstatic. I poured my heart and soul into getting that house ready to go on the market. Everything was perfect and I even managed to time things around my getaway…… buuuuut the day before I was supposed to leave, I got that dreaded phone call. You know, the one where your client tells you they got a private offer on the house and they don’t need to list after all?

I was devastated.

This was my chance to launch my business and start getting noticed and it was slipping away from me. Well at that moment I decided to make a quick pitch. I asked if I could list the house the next day and hold an open house over the weekend. Just give me until Monday and if I can’t sell it, then take your stupid private offer. Well, he took me up on it, but guess what that meant?

Yup, Sayanara Mexico!

Long story short, I didn’t sell the house that weekend and they did end up taking the private offer. But I did meet a family at the open house who used me to buy an even nicer home a few days later and then I sold their home. That was all that was needed to kickstart my career in real estate. From that sale on, the momentum got hold and I ended up making $250,000 that very first year.

I lost my money on the Mexico trip and my sister didn’t speak to me for 2 months for bailing on her (which was so unfair btw because there was a group of them going so it didn’t actually affect her at all), but anyway, my point is that you will never make it in real estate if you don’t have the right mindset. You need to have commitment, perseverance, grit and determination. You need to wholeheartedly believe in yourself and believe in your success. You can’t expect to succeed in this business, without being willing to work your butt off and without being willing to make some sacrifices to get there.

Now for the super simple part I mentioned.

The 3 things you absolutely need to have, if you are going to succeed in Real Estate.

The first thing is to have the right mindset…

Now before I lose you and you think c’mon give me something actionable here, you need to hear me out! Because if you don’t have the right mindset for this business, you’ll never make it. Guaranteed. Everything else you do is built off of your mindset.

This is the foundation of any successful endeavour whether it be in sports or in business. Your mindset is critical. So get your head screwed on properly!! And that starts with identifying any self-limiting beliefs you may have, or fears that may be controlling you subconsciously. Or perhaps it’s some deep-rooted money blocks that are holding you back. You really can’t underestimate the impact this stuff has.

The other piece of mindset is whether you have a fixed mindset or a growth mindset. The more you try to view things as “figureoutable”, the more you’ll achieve.

Nothing will hold you back. So spend some time paying attention to the things you say to yourself.

The next thing is to take the right approach…

Ok so if the first thing you need to have is the right mindset, the second thing you need, is to take the right approach. This is where in my opinion “traditional” real estate coaching or sales training in general, has brainwashed most people.

Old-school sales tactics simply don’t work today.

Not only are they dated, but consumers are much savvier and they are extremely sensitive to being ‘closed’. So everything you’ve been taught about “how to build a successful Real Estate business by making cold calls or door knocking or using scripts or asking friends and family for referrals”?? THROW IT OUT NOW.

There is a much more progressive and evolved way to build a successful business today.

It starts with this….

There is a great upside-down misconception about sales, and that is that it is an effort to get something from someone. The truth is, that sales at its best, at its most effective – is precisely the opposite.

It is about GIVING.

In fact, the word Sell comes from the Old English word sellan, which means – you guessed it – ‘to give.” Selling is giving – it’s giving time, attention, counsel, education, empathy and Value.

Typically “sales” are taught as a set of specific skills and techniques aimed at getting someone to use your services, in exchange for their dollars. From prospecting dialogues to qualifying questions to overcome objections and closing the sale, every step is mapped out. All you have to do is thoroughly learn and carefully practice these techniques and you too will become a sales success right!? Wrong. The vast majority of people in sales and in real estate in particular, actually have a hard time selling.

Well, I believe in a different approach, what I call soulful selling which goes like this instead:

-Create value.

– touch people’s lives.

– build networks.

– be real.

– follow-through.

– stay in touch.

– repeat.

To sell soulfully, you need to shift your focus from getting to GIVING. It’s not about you or the services you provide and it’s not about you and what you think —-it’s about the other person and what’s important to THEM. It’s about serving and giving.

So what do you give? What makes a great salesperson great at sales, is that they are not focused on making the sale. Instead, they are wholeheartedly interested in the other person and what’s important to them.

They focus only on creating VALUE for that person, regardless of whether or not they make the sale. And what happens when they do that? They create a vast and spreading sphere of goodwill wherever they go.

They enrich, enhance and add value to people’s lives. And as a side-effect, they sell a lot.

So focus on the quality of your relationships and on providing value to other people, regardless of “making a sale” and you will create an exchange that is both more satisfying AND more profitable.

So when I talk about taking the right approach. It centres around respect. Respect your friends, your family, your acquaintances, your clients and strangers alike. Treat them like intelligent, competent human beings, who do not need a lot of slick sales BS to make the right decisions.

When I got into this business, from day one I knew I was going to do it differently. I never cold-called, I never door knocked, I never asked anyone for a referral. I never even gave my business card to someone, unless they asked me for it.

Instead, I focused on giving value. If they were starting a business, I’d send them a book I found super helpful and then I’d refer people to them, if they needed to get their kids into daycare, I’d send them a list of my favourite ones, if they were thinking of taking a trip, I’d send them the best spots to go.

I tried to give value to anyone who needed anything – often nothing to do with Real Estate…..and over time, I just became known as the go-to resource for help.

When those people started thinking about buying or selling real estate or referring someone who was, I was top of mind. The key though, is that I wasn’t giving with expectations of receiving something in the future. I wasn’t giving to get. I gave for the sake of giving, that’s it. The natural outcome was that I received a lot in return.

The final thing is to always do the right things….

What does that mean?

I see this all the time, people get their license and they immediately get busy doing things, often random things and with little or no strategy behind them. Part of the problem is that a lot of realtors, (not all of them of course), but a lot of them, don’t have business backgrounds. They’ve not been trained on how to run a business and they’re not always savvy marketers. But you have to remember, that you are running a full-fledged business, and real estate is just the service that you provide. When you run a small business, you are everything and in order to truly understand your business and have the ability to run it successfully, you need to learn how to build it from the ground up.

When a company launches a new product, it’s not done haphazardly.

It starts with a lot of research to understand consumer needs.

And then a brand is created that appeals to that audience.

Then messages are created that resonate with that audience, and then FINALLY ads are created that attract that audience.

Starting a real estate business is NO DIFFERENT. Whether you’re brand new or have been at this for a few years, if you haven’t got a brand strategy, you need to go back to basics. You need to spend some time understanding yourself first. What is your why, what makes you unique and who is your ideal client avatar? You need to clearly define those things and from there, develop a personal brand around it.

All your marketing messages – your social media posts, your website, your blog, your marketing materials, etc. all need to consistently convey that strategic brand message.

Once you’ve got your foundational strategies in place, you need to grow who you know. Business is going to come to you from 3 different buckets:

1. people you know,
2. people they know and
3. people who don’t know you.

A lot of traditional coaches will tell you to focus solely on working your sphere of influence – and then to ask for referrals from those people to tap into the second bucket of people. My philosophy is different and it is to continually grow who you know by meeting new people anywhere and everywhere you can. Not with the intent to get business from them, but just for the sake of meeting new people. Then give value to those people, consistently and frequently. Do not ask them for business and certainly do not ask them for referrals. Those will come when you earn them. Over time you will start naturally attracting business to you, but in the process, you will not damage relationships or develop a reputation of being an irritating realtor.

Getting business from your sphere of influence should happen organically, but it is not a quick fix. This strategy can take time, but it is absolutely the right way to handle your biggest asset – which is your relationships. Damage those and you’ll put your entire career in jeopardy.

So how do your kick-start your career then? How do you get things going a little more quickly? First of all, building a real estate business takes time. There really is no quick fix. However, you can start tapping into the 3rd bucket of people – those that don’t know you, with your marketing. And if you focus on doing this consistently, you’ll reap the rewards.

The earlier you start in your career, the better it will work for you. The goal here is to get to the tipping point. Which is that magical place where business just starts coming to you with very little effort. It’s a lovely magical place. Does it take some effort and work? Well duh of course.

Now there are two ways you can accomplish this, one is more expensive, but it happens a little more quickly and the other is super affordable, but it takes a little longer. Which route you choose, ultimately depends on your budget, but both options start with content marketing. For the record, lots of agents do content marketing, but they don’t do it properly.

I’m going to give you the Coles notes here….content marketing is about creating relevant, timely and valuable content for your ideal audience and then either promoting that content for free on your social media pages and on your google page or through paid advertising to drive traffic to your website where you use a lead magnet to encourage visitors to opt-in to your mailing list.

Most agents stop there and then they hound that email list with irrelevant, agent-centred messages that just lead to huge unsubscribe rates.

Instead of doing that, what you really want to do is to retarget those visitors and a look-alike audience with super affordable brand awareness ads on Facebook & Google. Going into more detail is another chat for another day, but if you’re interested in learning more about how this all works, why you need to be doing it and how much it will help your business, then tune into my monthly podcast where we talk all things digital marketing for Realtors plus much more business and mindset related. You can subscribe HERE and be notified of new episodes, or go back and start listening from the beginning.

This is the place where I dumb it all down for you and show you how realtors just like you, are tripling their businesses with these strategies. So if you want to set yourself up for success in the years to come, Make sure you follow along every month at womenrockingrealestate.com/podcast or find Women Rocking Real Estate on whatever your favourite podcast listening apps are.

So before I say goodbye, just a quick reminder of the THREE things you absolutely need to have if you want to be successful in Real Estate:

1. Make sure you have the right mindset,
2. That you take the right approach with people.
3. That you‘re doing the right things.

On that note, thanks so much for reading through, I wish you all the success you deserve and Remember… the more you learn, the more you’ll earn.

Until next time!